We know how stubbornly the Ptolemaic cosmogony still clings to our conceptions, how largely it still dominates—or till recently did dominate—the religious cosmography of the most civilised peoples.
In Philosophy our leading teachers seem as yet to have a very feeble appreciation of the new conditions. They turn greedily to the eloquent pages of L'Evolution créatrice, but however earnestly they search they cannot find there any definite solution of the difficulties of the age-old problem. They wander wearily through the mazes of psychological detail or wage almost childish logomachies over the interpretation of each other's essays. Philosophical magazines are filled with articles which reflect this state of the philosophic mind. Philosophical congresses meet and argue and go home; Gifford lecturers prelect; yet so far as can be seen there is little sign that the key has been grasped. The great fact remains obscured amidst a mass of words.
The elucidation of the problem of Knowledge demands certain improvements in our philosophic terminology. Language as a rule is a very unerring philosopher, and words shaped and polished by long usage generally express, more truly than those who use them realise, the essential reality of things. Yet these long-enduring errors of the ages which we have been discussing here have left their impress too on the terminology of Metaphysics.
Thought and Action are in common speech contrasted, and the distinction expresses an essential truth. But when we seek to say further that both of these are Activities, we are stating another truth in terms which are hardly consistent with the previously contrasted distinction. It might be better if Action and Active could be applied generally to both and if the term exertion could be substituted for Action in describing the forms of activity which we denominate motor. To that suggestion, however, there are also serious objections. The words derived from ago have historically a special application to the exertional and dynamic. We leave the question to our readers as one of which it is of considerable importance to find a satisfactory solution.
In the foregoing pages our object has been to illustrate the erroneous conceptions by which the theory of human cognition has been obscured and to explain briefly what we conceive to be the true solution. The argument in support of the doctrine here explained has been more fully presented by the present writer in an essay entitled The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge, to which the reader who desires to study the question further must now be referred.
FOOTNOTES:
[60:1] Κόσμον τόνδε τὸν αὐτὸν ἀπάντων οὔτε τις Θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησε, ἀλλ' ἧν αἰεὶ καὶ ἔστι καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. (The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28.)
[61:1] "La subdivision do la matière en corps isolés est relative à notre perception" (Evolution créatrice, p. 13).